All Policy articles – Page 228
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HSJ Knowledge
Benchmarking out of hours healthcare
Huge variations in the cost and quality of out of hours healthcare around the country have led to moves to benchmark these services. Kaye McIntosh reports
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HSJ Knowledge
Patient choice in mental health: your shout
The views of mental health patients will become much more important over the next decade as they demand services tailored to their needs, writes Mark Gould
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HSJ Knowledge
Mental health foundation trusts: F marks the spot
Just under half of mental health trusts have achieved foundation status. Helen Mooney looks at the options for those that may not be able to make the grade
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News
Unite members canvassed on industrial action
Members of Unite, the country's largest union, are being canvassed on a menu for industrial action to reverse the government's stand on below-inflation pay awards for NHS staff.
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Comment
Angela Greatley on tackling social exclusion
There is a group of people who are chronically excluded from housing, work, relationships and the kinds of activity most people aspire to in 21st century Britain. They exhibit the most complex problems but they can be the most excluded from the very help they need.
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News
Alan Johnson approves A&E closure plans
Health secretary Alan Johnson has given his backing to controversial plans to close the accident and emergency department at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, London.Proposals by Barnet, Enfield and Haringey primary care trusts, which had been referred to the independent reconfiguration panel, will see parts of the hospital rebuilt and ...
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News
Accountancy firms win PCT board roles
Three of the 'big four' accountancy firms have been selected to improve primary care trust boards' skills.KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young are all leading consortiums that have made successful bids to be on the Department of Health's new PCT board development framework.
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News
Drug addiction services hit by unrealistic targets
Unrealistic targets to get more drug addicts into treatment are causing the quality of services to plummet, psychiatrists are warning.
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HSJ Knowledge
Get happy: the secret to a healthy old age
There is clear evidence older people benefit from preventive healthcare. For the fulfilled old age that people want, services must spot depression early and support good diet and mobility
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News
PFI plan could keep debts off NHS trusts' balance sheets
NHS trusts may hand their private finance initiative hospitals over to specially created charities to avoid reporting PFI debts on their balance sheets, HSJ has learned.The controversial plans would involve trusts ceding control of the hospitals to a third party.
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Leader
Trusts survey the wreckage as PFI hospitals begin to crumble
Arcane accountancy rules are in danger of costing the NHS control of some of its buildings. As HSJ reveals this week, the Treasury's decision to adopt new international accountancy standards is pushing trusts with private finance initiative debts to consider hiving off their estate to charities.
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News
Conservatives plan to step up councils' role in health
Public health directors would have to report to local authorities under plans announced by the shadow health secretary last week.
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Comment
Michael White on public health policy
Andrew Lansley seems to have been the first health politico to get off the beach and back in hot water this summer with that 'no excuses, no nannying' speech he made to the pro-market Reform think tank.
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Comment
Simon Stevens on the top-up payment maze
The government has committed to answering at some time in the coming weeks a highly awkward dilemma: whether or not to allow NHS patients to make 'top-up' payments to cover treatments the NHS will not fund.
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News
Government to underwrite hospital trusts' assets
The government is to underwrite hospital trusts' assets to prevent them going bust and ending up in court.HSJ has learned that the Department of Health is to issue a consultation paper this month that rules out insolvency for trusts that are failing financially.
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Comment
Gay Lee on the social care debate
Nurses and social workers know it is impossible to tell where social care ends and healthcare begins. Yet they waste time, effort and money trying to prise them apart - because government policy says they must.
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News
Scottish car parking charges abolished
Car parking charges have been abolished at all hospitals in Scotland.
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News
Almost half of all patients offered choice of hospital
The percentage of patients being offered a choice of hospital for their first outpatient appointment was 47 per cent in March 2008, up from 46 per cent in January.
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Comment
Amanda Doyle on the trouble with patient choice
Lord Darzi, in his next stage review, talks a lot about choice, and why not? Greater choice of healthcare provider is, undoubtedly, a good thing.
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HSJ Partners
Building skills in the healthcare workforce
Skills for Health offers a range of services to healthcare leaders to improve the quality of their workforce's skills. John Rogers offers guidance on the tools available